Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin Calls Paul Simon An ‘Idiot’

Steve Berlin, the man behind the keys and horns in Los Lobos, is talking some serious trash about someone he’s long feuded with, Paul Simon.

Berlin alleges that his group hasn’t exactly been happy with Paul over the years, claiming that a song they worked on during the Graceland sessions in the mid-1980s with Simon was never given the credit it was due.

Apparently, according to an interview with Rock Cellar magazine, the Los Lobos boys were doing a favor for their label by agreeing to work with Paul, but the sessions with Simon were awkward, to say the least.

Steve recalls, “Rather than engage us, Paul would just stare at us like we were animals in a zoo or something. I’m telling you, the guy is a weird dude – there’s no two ways about it.”

He also said the band felt as though Simon wasn’t really interested in playing with them.

“We’d been waiting around for two days for Paul to come up with something, but he had nothing. So to have something to do, we just started playing what we thought was our song [“The Myth Of Fingerprints”], when Paul suddenly says, ‘Hey that’s cool. What is that?’ and we said, ‘Oh, it’s a song we’ve been working on.'” According to Berlin, Simon asked if they could work on it together and the band agreed, only to be surprised when Simon’s album came out six months later with credits that read “Words and Music by Paul Simon.”

Berlin says the band attempted to find out what happened with the credits, until Simon contacted the band and said, “Sue me. See what happens.”

Berlin closes out the interview with a whopper, saying: “Everybody I know who has ever worked with Paul Simon says he’s the biggest jerk in the world. Yeah — he’s a f***ing idiot.”